1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an electric precipitator for collection of foreign materials or pollutants such as dust by electric attraction.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electric precipitator is generally mounted on an air conditioner. More particularly, the electric precipitator is arranged on an air flow path to collect foreign materials or pollutants such as dust (hereinafter, referred to as ‘pollutant’) contained in air passing through the electric precipitator by electric attraction.
A conventional electric precipitator generally has a double-stage type structure to precipitate a pollutant, including a charging part which is positioned upstream of an air flow direction to charge a pollutant, and a dust collection part which is positioned downstream of the air flow direction to precipitate the charged pollutant therein.
In such a double-stage type electric precipitator, the charging part includes a discharge electrode in a wire form to fabricate an anode and a pair of ground electrodes, which are located at both sides of the discharge electrode and spaced apart from the discharge electrode at a certain interval in order to fabricate a cathode. Also, the dust collection part includes plural high voltage electrodes and plural low voltage electrodes, which are alternately arranged and spaced from one another.
However, in order to generate a discharge between an electric wire and a ground electrode, such a conventional electric precipitator requires a considerably high voltage to be applied to the discharge electrode, thus requiring a large scale power supply to apply high voltage and increasing electric power consumption.
Furthermore, since high voltage is applied to the discharge electrode as described above, the discharge electrode must be sufficiently spaced from the dust collection part in consideration of safety, and therefore, it is difficult to reduce a width of the electric precipitator below a certain level.